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Chapter 11: A Noah’s Ark of Consciousness

One of the mystics in India, Kabir, was a weaver. He had thousands of followers and still he continued to weave clothes. Even kings were his followers.

The king of Varanasi asked him, “Master, it doesn’t look good, it makes us feel embarrassed. We can take care of you. There is no need for you to weave clothes and every week on market day, go into the market to sell your clothes. Just think of us: people laugh at us.”

Kabir said, “I can understand your problem but I have only one talent and that is to weave beautiful clothes. If I stop doing it, who will do it? And God comes in different faces, in different bodies, to purchase clothes every week in the marketplace.”

He used to address every customer, “Lord, be very careful of the cloth. I have been weaving it, not just like any other weaver - my songs are in it and my soul is in it. I have poured my whole being in it. Be careful, use it with tenderness and love and remember: Kabir has woven it especially for you, Lord.” And it was not something that he was addressing to anybody in particular - any customer!

This was his contribution. He used to say to his disciples, “What else can I do? I am doing my best: I can weave, I can sing, I can dance - and I am immensely contented.”

Whatever you are doing, if there is contentment and a feeling that this whole existence is nothing but the manifestation of godliness, that we are traveling on holy earth, that whomever you are meeting, you are meeting God - there is no other way; only faces are different, but the inner reality is the same - all your tensions will disappear. And the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.

Then life will not be just an ordinary, routine, day-to-day existence, but a dance from cradle to grave. And existence will be immensely enriched by your grace, by your relaxation, by your silence, by your awareness.

You will not leave the world without contributing something valuable to it. But people are always looking at others, at what others are doing - somebody is playing the flute and you cannot, and immediately there is misery; somebody is painting and you cannot, and there is misery.

Whatever you are doing, do it with such love, with such care that the smallest thing in the world becomes a piece of art. It will bring great joy to you. And it will create a world without competition, without comparison; it will give dignity to all people; it will restore their pride, which religions have destroyed.

In my whole life, I have never judged any person. If God is happy with him, why should I be worried whether he is a thief or a murderer? Perhaps that is the function existence wants him to do. All that is needed is that he should do it with as much artfulness and as much intelligence as he can gather - with his totality.